We must restore constitutional government

[regent]

mer

Have the American people been required to obey laws in the past that were later found to be unconstitutional?

In some cases - like the NSA surveillance programs - the American people can't obey or disobey. It's just an unconstitutional nightmare forced on them against their will. And even if it is later shut down, the damage has been done.

How do we know a law passed by the Congress and signed by the president is against the people's will? Is that the criterion we should use for laws, if some believe it is against the people's will cancel the law?

 

[P@triot]

Have the American people been required to obey laws in the past that were later found to be unconstitutional?

In some cases - like the NSA surveillance programs - the American people can't obey or disobey. It's just an unconstitutional nightmare forced on them against their will. And even if it is later shut down, the damage has been done.

How do we know a law passed by the Congress and signed by the president is against the people's will? Is that the criterion we should use for laws, if some believe it is against the people's will cancel the law?

Did you seriously just ask that question?!?

By law, the "criterion" we use for creating law is called the U.S. Constitution. That is what we are required by law to be using. If it's not a power of the federal government (such as healthcare) then the federal government cannot make laws around it.

If it is a power of the federal government (such as defense) they still cannot create laws that violate the rights of the American people (such as violating the 4th Amendment with domestic spying).

 

[regent]

Have the American people been required to obey laws in the past that were later found to be unconstitutional?

In some cases - like the NSA surveillance programs - the American people can't obey or disobey. It's just an unconstitutional nightmare forced on them against their will. And even if it is later shut down, the damage has been done.

How do we know a law passed by the Congress and signed by the president is against the people's will? Is that the criterion we should use for laws, if some believe it is against the people's will cancel the law?

Did you seriously just ask that question?!?

By law, the "criterion" we use for creating law is called the U.S. Constitution. That is what we are required by law to be using. If it's not a power of the federal government (such as healthcare) then the federal government cannot make laws around it.

If it is a power of the federal government (such as defense) they still cannot create laws that violate the rights of the American people (such as violating the 4th Amendment with domestic spying).

The answer is of course the American people have obeyed laws in the past that were later declared unconstitutional. That should then bring up the next question, are we obeying laws today that will in the future be declared unconstitutional?

 

[P@triot]

Have the American people been required to obey laws in the past that were later found to be unconstitutional?

In some cases - like the NSA surveillance programs - the American people can't obey or disobey. It's just an unconstitutional nightmare forced on them against their will. And even if it is later shut down, the damage has been done.

How do we know a law passed by the Congress and signed by the president is against the people's will? Is that the criterion we should use for laws, if some believe it is against the people's will cancel the law?

Did you seriously just ask that question?!?

By law, the "criterion" we use for creating law is called the U.S. Constitution. That is what we are required by law to be using. If it's not a power of the federal government (such as healthcare) then the federal government cannot make laws around it.

If it is a power of the federal government (such as defense) they still cannot create laws that violate the rights of the American people (such as violating the 4th Amendment with domestic spying).

The answer is of course the American people have obeyed laws in the past that were later declared unconstitutional. That should then bring up the next question, are we obeying laws today that will in the future be declared unconstitutional?

The answer, of course, is what I already stated and you ran from like a little girl with a disingenuous agenda. Can the American people decide to comply with the NSA's domestic surveillance? Yes or No?

 

[P@triot]

How do we know a law passed by the Congress and signed by the president is against the people's will? Is that the criterion we should use for laws, if some believe it is against the people's will cancel the law?

"In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution." -Thomas Jefferson

 

[P@triot]

No wonder we are $19 trillion in debt...

Government Agency Spent Millions on PR Campaign

 

[regent]

How do we know a law passed by the Congress and signed by the president is against the people's will? Is that the criterion we should use for laws, if some believe it is against the people's will cancel the law?

"In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution." -Thomas Jefferson

View attachment 82970

"No society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law."
Jefferson

 

[P@triot]

How do we know a law passed by the Congress and signed by the president is against the people's will? Is that the criterion we should use for laws, if some believe it is against the people's will cancel the law?

"In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution." -Thomas Jefferson

View attachment 82970

"No society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law."
Jefferson

Yeah? And? Why do you think Thomas Jefferson and his pals are considered among the brightest minds and greatest men of all time? Because they had the foresight to build an amendment process into the U.S. Constitution.

You want to pretend like the left's insane policies (failed economic socialism, gay marriage, government mandated healthcare, etc.) have all been the result of amending the U.S. Constitution and they have not been.

If the American people want these policies - then so be it. They can and would vote for those items to become the responsibility of the federal government. But they have done no such thing.

 

[P@triot]

The federal government is explicitly restricted to 18 enumerated powers and the environment isn't one of them. This is the result of unconstitutional government...

EPA Faces More Pressure Over Gold King Mine Spill

 

[JakeStarkey]

Too bad patriot is not a constitutional scholar.

 

[g5000]

I'm going to have to side with Patriot on this one.

One of the reasons Donald Trump is succeeding is because the American people instinctively know they are being robbed. They can feel someone's hands rifling through their pockets.

The problem is that the robbery is being done on such a sophisticated level, that most Americans don't have the time or the knowledge to understand how it is being done through our legislative process.

So when a demagogue comes along who simplifies it for them, and points a finger at a particular group ("it's those rapist Mexicans"), there are a certain number of people who will grasp that straw like a life preserver, even though it isn't Mexicans who are stealing from them.

The American people also feel the shadow of the government peeping into their personal lives. Again, they don't know how it is being done, but they sense it.

The police state is regularly violating the Fourth Amendment, and we gave them permission to do so in the terrifying aftermath of 9/11. We gave up our liberty for safety. It became axiomatic. Bush: "He kept us safe."

Yes, but HOW did Bush keep us safe? He did it by spying on all of us. And he passed the baton to Obama.

This has been known for a long time, and no one really objects.

We should be objecting. Very loudly.

 

[P@triot]

I'm going to have to side with Patriot on this one.

One of the reasons Donald Trump is succeeding is because the American people instinctively know they are being robbed. They can feel someone's hands rifling through their pockets.

The problem is that the robbery is being done on such a sophisticated level, that most Americans don't have the time or the knowledge to understand how it is being done through our legislative process.

So when a demagogue comes along who simplifies it for them, and points a finger at a particular group ("it's those rapist Mexicans"), there are a certain number of people who will grasp that straw like a life preserver, even though it isn't Mexicans who are stealing from them.

The American people also feel the shadow of the government peeping into their personal lives. Again, they don't know how it is being done, but they sense it.

The police state is regularly violating the Fourth Amendment, and we gave them permission to do so in the terrifying aftermath of 9/11. We gave up our liberty for safety. It became axiomatic. Bush: "He kept us safe."

Yes, but HOW did Bush keep us safe? He did it by spying on all of us. And he passed the baton to Obama.

This has been known for a long time, and no one really objects.

We should be objecting. Very loudly.

It's funny - both sides actually objected. But the only did so when the other guys party was in power. Under Bush, Democrats lost their mind over the Patriot Act. Republican's applauded. In steps Obama, and after promising on the campaign trail to end the Patriot Act, he actually expands it. Republican's (who made it possible in the first place) lose their minds. Democrats (who previous opposed it), suddenly see it as not threat at all and not an issue to deal with.

Stupid. Very stupid. By both sides.

 

[regent]

The federal government is explicitly restricted to 18 enumerated powers and the environment isn't one of them. This is the result of unconstitutional government...

EPA Faces More Pressure Over Gold King Mine Spill

The federal government is explicitly restricted to 18 enumerated powers and the environment isn't one of them. This is the result of unconstitutional government...

EPA Faces More Pressure Over Gold King Mine Spill

The federal government is not restricted to 18 enumerated powers, the executive has powers as does the Court.

 

[BlackAsCoal]

The people tasked with enforcing our laws are the same people violating our most important laws....

Beyond the controversial ways stingray technology works, the secrecy and deception law enforcement agencies use to cloak their use of the devices is also troubling. Law enforcement agencies around the country have routinely used the devices without obtaining a warrant from judges. In cases where they did obtain a warrant, they often deceived judges about the nature of the technology they planned to use. Instead of telling judges that they intended to use a stingray or cell site simulator, they have often mischaracterized the technology, describing it as a pen register device instead.

Hacker Lexicon: Stingrays, the Spy Tool the Government Tried, and Failed, to Hide

Like Thomas Jefferson, I believe the Constitution should be re-written every 19 years .. then the Constitution can deal more effectively with issues of government and technology that didn't even exist in the minds of the Founders.

Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. It may be said, that the succeeding generation exercising, in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to nineteen years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be, indeed, if every form of government were so perfectly contrived, that the will of the majority could always be obtained, fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every practical man, that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:459, Papers 15:396

No generation should be bound by the thoughts of the long dead.

Let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. What these periods should be nature herself indicates. By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come into place; or, in other words, a new generation. Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years should be provided by the constitution, so that it may be handed on with periodical repairs from generation to generation to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure."
--Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:42

 

[JakeStarkey]

Many on the far right and among the libertarians trap themselves with the fallacy of "idola tribus", the idols of the tribe.

They have so echoed the nonsense in the chamber they believe as easily as the old saw that the Chicago Cubs are going to the World Series this year: the cubbies just can't miss!

 

[P@triot]

The people tasked with enforcing our laws are the same people violating our most important laws....

Beyond the controversial ways stingray technology works, the secrecy and deception law enforcement agencies use to cloak their use of the devices is also troubling. Law enforcement agencies around the country have routinely used the devices without obtaining a warrant from judges. In cases where they did obtain a warrant, they often deceived judges about the nature of the technology they planned to use. Instead of telling judges that they intended to use a stingray or cell site simulator, they have often mischaracterized the technology, describing it as a pen register device instead.

Hacker Lexicon: Stingrays, the Spy Tool the Government Tried, and Failed, to Hide

Like Thomas Jefferson, I believe the Constitution should be re-written every 19 years .. then the Constitution can deal more effectively with issues of government and technology that didn't even exist in the minds of the Founders.

And that's fine. Simply amend the U.S. Constitution to require it to be rewritten every "X" amount of years.

The only thing I will say is that in a nation of 330,000,000 people which is infinitely more diverse than it was 235 years ago, getting people to agree on a new Constitution is going to be a nightmare. It was quite a challenge two centuries ago when just about everyone was a white, Angeo-Saxon, Protestant. Now we are a nation of Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, etc. who are Catholic, Jewish, muslim, etc.

In my humble opinion, it would be exponentially easier to simply amend the U.S. Constitution when and where it makes sense than trying to write a whole new one every 20 years. But that is a decision for the American people to make.

 

[P@triot]

One of an endless array of dangers that are the result of abandoning the U.S. Constitution. Matt Bevin is spot-on with his assessment here. Violence should be the last resort of last resorts. But with the current level of corruption and the near total abandonment of the U.S. Constitution - it might very well become the reality that America is forced into.

I'll say this much - if it ever comes to a second Civil War, I pray that the ultimate outcome would include some kind of mechanism to prevent this from happening again. Maybe some sort of Constitution "gatekeepers" that have the authority to trump the Supreme Court and who are not appointed by someone in the government.

“I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically,” Bevin said, according to the Washington Post. “But that may, in fact, be the case".

Kentucky Governor: Patriots May Need to ‘Shed Blood’ if Clinton Gets Elected

 

[JakeStarkey]

The Constitution gate keeper already exist as written into the Constitution: SCOTUS.

If it comes to blood shed, the great majority of Americans will ensure that it is that of the Alt Right deplorables.

 

[owebo]

The Constitution gate keeper already exist as written into the Constitution: SCOTUS.

If it comes to blood shed, the great majority of Americans will ensure that it is that of the Alt Right deplorables.

You radical LWNJs will stack up like cord wood......

 

[Windship]

“We must restore constitutional government”

Such is the ignorant nonsense of the TPM and others on the ridiculous right.

The United States is currently functioning under Constitutional government, nothing needs to be ‘restored’ – the notion is moronic, baseless idiocy.

The Federal government is functioning as intended by the Founding Generation: a Constitutional Republic whose citizens are subject solely to the rule of law, not men – as men are incapable of ruling justly.

A Federal government afforded by the Constitution powers both expressed and implied (McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)).

A Federal government whose laws are supreme, where the Supreme Court determines what the Constitution means, as authorized by the doctrine of Judicial Review and Articles III and VI of the Constitution, and where rulings by the Supreme Court become the law of the land, binding on the states and local jurisdictions, who have no ‘right’ to ‘nullify’ or ‘ignore’ Federal law or the rulings of Federal courts (Cooper v. Aaron (1958)).

That conservatives, libertarians, and members of the TPM disagree with Supreme Court decisions because those rulings might conflict with errant, wrongheaded conservative dogma is of no consequence and devoid of merit.

Omg. What planet do you live on? Do you think your vote matters? Do you think all candidates have an equal chance at debates? Do you think if your vote doesnt matter we ave a Democracy? Do you think the government is afraid of the population? Do you trust our government?
Look this up: oligarchic inverted totalitarianism. Thats what we have. Corporations have taken over the government and the courts, the legislative and executive branches are owned by the corporations as well. The liberals(neo liberals)speak what the working class want to hear then betrays them to corporate. Functioning properly? Lol, for who?